Billy Whiskers at the Circus

by Frances Trego Montgomery

To begin with, he didn’t like either of them. More than that, the Circus manager had paid his friends of Cloverleaf Farm a handsome sum for allowing Billy to stay with him, and finally, he felt sure of rich food, kind treatment, constant excitement, growing fame and a return to his old home at the end of the season. To be sure, on the other hand, the association with the monkeys was not much to his liking, but as they felt very grateful to him and were evidently kindly disposed, Billy knew that he had the upper hands of them and he felt that as long as that situation lasted he could stand it.

“I’ll do this,” decided Billy. “When it comes time to go, I will make these monkeys insist that I ride with them in their cage. In the meantime I will tell them all about the danger that threatens me and fix it up with them that when Mike and Jim try to get me away they are all to pitch on to that precious pair of thieves and give them a lesson that they will not soon forget.”

Billy laughed softly to himself as he thought of the trouble he had cooked for his enemies.

There was an hour or more before it came time for Billy and his band to repeat the performance of the afternoon. He improved it by telling Colonel Blue Nose Mandrill and the rest of the scheme that had been hatched to kidnap him, and you can easily believe that he had no trouble in getting the monkeys to agree to his plan to thwart it. In fact, Billy had to specially caution them not to go too far. Colonel Mandrill said right away that he would fix at least one of them so that he would never try to steal one of his friends again, while the rest declared that they would see to it that the other did not escape. They all looked so fierce that Billy thought once more of old Mr. Coon’s horror of monkeys, and remembered how he felt when old Blue Nose had him by the neck and beard and threatened to pull him into his cage even if he was smashed into a pulp in the process.

“Don’t kill them,” said Billy, in a hurry. “But you may scare them out of their wits. They deserve it.”

“I’ll see how I feel at the time,” muttered Colonel Mandrill, and Billy couldn’t get any more of a promise out of him than that. All the rest, however, promised not to go too far.

By this time the moment had arrived for Billy and the monkeys to go into the ring.

People who had been present in the afternoon had spread the news of the astonishing last act. Many of them had returned to see it a second time, and there was a vast crowd all told, very many of whom were interested chiefly in it. Under such circumstances, it is needless to say that the appearance of the goat and his monkeys was greeted by deafening bursts of applause.

Billy, after his bath, both looked and felt fine. The monkeys, too, were rested and glad of an opportunity to repeat, with variations, the feats of the afternoon.

The manager, who had been feeling very nervous for fear that his new performers could not be depended upon, was vastly relieved at the way the act started off, and his smiling face soon told how pleased he was to find that his fears were groundless.